Monday Morning News Fix

Brit band The Vaccines impresses during U.S. debut: New York City’s Bowery Ballroom hosted the U.S. debut U.S. performance (one of only two stateside) of London band the Vaccines. Spin has their full review from the show here.

Kanye West tweets new album details: Not about to rest on his laurels, Kanye West announced via Twitter that he’ll followup his barely two month old album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, with a new solo album this summer. And before that, he’ll release his collaboration with Jay-Z, called Watch the Throne, in March. Rolling Stone has more details here.

The Horrors frontman Faris Badwan starts new band, plays at Vatican: Faris Badwan, frontman for UK band the Horrors, has a new project, Cat’s Eyes, with Canadian opera soprano and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Zeffira. The duo played their first show in December in a pretty unusual place: St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, during an afternoon mass “attended by seven high-ranking cardinals,” according to a press release. Pitchfork has the details here

The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon also plays on the side: In describing his new side project on his blog, Brian Fallon writes that “if Tom Waits, the National, the Afghan Whigs, Bon Iver, and Nick Cave made a band with Percy Sledge that’d be called The Horrible Crowes.” With his guitar tech pal Ian Perkins, Fallon is only now recording demos but hopes to “put out a full length record sometime this year, before it gets cold again.”

Sonic Youth mixtape streaming now!: Sonic Youth’s soundtrack of the French film Simon Werner A Disparu comes out tomorrow, but you can listen to two songs from it plus demos from Daydream Nation, a recent recording of “Star Power,” and other bits of forgotten or unused songs. Listen to the mixtape here.

Times New Viking sign to Wichita, announce new album, release new video: The band just recently signed to Wichita Recordings in the UK and Merge in the US. Their new album, entitled Dancer Equired comes out on April 25. In the meantime, enjoy this video for their new song “Room to Live”:

Stereogum features their 8 best videos of the week: Some of these you just have to see for yourself! This video from Dream Cop is particularly wonderful… and weird:

Creed saves boy from pack of wolves: NME has the details of a Norwegian boys harrowing encounter with a blood-thirsty pack of wolves. Fortunately, the boy happened to have some Creed with him. Read the amazing story here. In the meantime, I’m going to read up on these so-called “wolves”…

This week on the late night talk shows: There are a lot of reruns this week, so if you missed any of these performances the first time, you’re going to want to catch them now — The Walkmen, Local Natives, Fitz & the Tantrums to name just a few. Conan O’Brien has some guests this week you really won’t want to miss the first time around: Iron & Wine, Wanda Jackson, and… Motorhead!!! Here are the highlights: